HDR Sunrise

I was up with the sun this morning and thinking about learning how to use HDR Stacking in Affinity Photo. However, I didn't make any HDR images that looked realistic and nice.

Below is a RAW photo that I retouched in an attempt to highlight the drama of this morning's sunrise without making it look too far removed from how my eye perceived it:

and an example of the picture with no retouching. To me, this looks thin and pale, the foreground too dark and the gray clouds too dark compared to how my eye saw it:

Also, there seems to be some odd "halo" effect around the large tree. I think that is an optical illusion due to the extreme contrast. When I zoom in on the original picture, I cannot see the halo, but when I zoom out I see it.

New Softbox Lighting

Needed a model for my new softbox lights.
Biscuit was volunteered.

Almost There

These raindrops traveled from way out in the ocean, high into the atmosphere and then down, down, down perhaps thousands of feet, only to be snared 6 feet shy of the soil. They caught in this birch that I planted 13 years ago. Then I caught them again in my eye and then my camera. Now the web.
Where to next I wonder?

May Your Cup Spilleth Over

A Thanksgiving Sentiment

Same Owl...Photo Cropped & Settings Fiddled

This owl was taking advantage of some sunlight on a mid-November morning to warm up, I suppose.

T-Barred Owl (Barred Owl standing on T-Bar)

Walking around the grounds today and I almost bumped into this guy:

Now I feel I need to augment my T-bars with some comfier perches...not sure how he could stand on this with more than one foot at a time.

Walipini Progress

Added 84 sq. ft. of roof to the walipini yesterday.
Credit to the sheep for needing a dry spot.

Arthur won the $50 Grand Prize for growing the largest pumpkin at the Fargher Lake Grange. The other three entrants together would have combined for nothing close to half the size of his Dill's Atlantic Giant.

Progress

Summer's end is officially near. Unofficially it got rained out a couple weeks ago.
We already found mushrooms...lobster last week and an absolute bounty of puffballs yesterday. Puffballs are edible when their interiors are still white. The boys hatched a plan to make a vegetable soup. I sat by with a sandwich, lobbing advice here and there, though none of it was needed. The boys have plenty of ability in the kitchen, which I admire.

Tomorrow we are having 10 lambs slaughtered. They have been good lambs and well-behaved, with the exception of Whitey Ford who I would have named Houdini had I known what an escape artist he was destined to become. Heidi has never developed an affinity for baseball history and thus never latched on to calling him by his duly given name but rather and spontaneously redubbing him Frankie White.

Most lambs, when they want out of a paddock, will get tangled in the fence, or knock it down. Not Frankie. He holds the 'most escapes' record by a country mile, with at least 9. Typically one is the most a given lamb can manage. But even more impressive to me is that I have never been able to discover where along the fence he made his break. He is either a world-class jumper, or a shapeshifter, taking snake form and slithering under the fence.

People always say you can't name your animals that are destined for the freezer. But being a natural contrarian and an avid namer of things, I could hardly help myself. Which is why tomorrow we will say goodbye, not to lambs #0-9, but instead to:

• Rorschach
• Cleopatra
• James Pinto
• Dottie
• Butterball
• B-Rabbit
• and the aforementioned Frankie White

The other three failed to distinguish themselves and will thus remain nameless.

Remaining for another two months will be Charlotte's ramling B-Rabbit and Pepper the European import.

Ewes remaining will be

• Evelyn
• Lucy Honeychurch
• Charlotte Bartlett
• Elizabeth Doolittle
• Clarabelle
• Cicily Tyson
• Betty White

Last but not least we have our first East Friesian ewe lamb that was born on-site: Babette Bartlett, daughter of Charlotte and Tuck the mighty.

In related news we discovered that planting in last winters sheep bedding is far and away the easiest way we have yet found to produce a low effort, high yield squash patch.

Likewise, my green dent corn grew fantastically in the chicken garden. Ears were commonly 2x the size of last year's typical. After planting I topdressed the soil with what I could scrape up from below the chicken's roost.

Yield was reduced significantly by some voracious varmint that was able to climb the corn stalks, chew through the husks and devour 7/8ths of an ear. We lost more than 10 ears in this manner, which was another first after growing this type of corn for 5 years.
Nevertheless, it's progress.

Pleasures

When, deep into night
impossibly bright
lightning strikes

A child might wake
fearfully shake
cowed by the quake

another more rash
might run to the sash
to watch the light slash

that would have been me
until thirty-three
but now I just be

and hold very still
feel air from the sill
now freshly chill

the day had oppressed me
pressured an pressed me
until I must rest me

the night she caressed me
the lightning impressed me
the thunder it blessed me

I listen for more
billowing rumbles galore
and smell petrichor

the corn in the garden
had begged for a pardon
and just received one

the rain is now dousing
rinsing and rousing
my little green loves

the cricket song
all night long
suddenly gone

Hot August Days

When the temperatures rise above the mid 70's F, we make sure our sheep have quality shade in their paddock.
Here I am leading them to a shady pasture on what is expected to be a 90+ degree day:

Green Corn Stew

This will be my 5th year growing Oaxacan Green Dent corn. To celebrate the planting, I made some corn stew with last years' kernels.
First I nixtamalized it, then made a basic stew.

Here are the kernels after being nixtamalized and washed.

Coyotes almost every night

I recorded a coyote.
https://youtu.be/EjGfne7Uq9M

This was recorded by pointing my phone out my open bedroom window.

Lambing Season Completed

Exactly one year ago we bought 4 dairy ewe lambs. 364 days later our lambs finished giving birth to the last of their lambs.

Here is the only ram lamb we got from this years births:

Premium dairy ram lamb

We have many more lambs and ewes to show and tell thanks mostly to my cousin's flock. It looks a bit like a sheepy Serengeti out here.
Good thing the grass is starting to grow.

Lambs Are Coming